Myrrh has a goblin inside her, a voice in her head that tells her all the things she’s done wrong, that berates her and drags her down. Desperately searching for her birth-parents across dilapidated seaside towns in the South coast of England, she finds herself silenced and cut off at every step.
Cayenne is trapped in a loveless marriage, the distance between her and her husband growing further and further each day. Longing for a child, she has visions promising her a baby.
As Myrrh’s frustrations grow, the goblin in her grows louder and louder, threatening to tear apart the few relationships she holds dear and destroy everything around her. When Cayenne finds her husband growing closer to his daughter – Cayenne’s stepdaughter – and pushing her further out of his life, she makes a decision that sends her into a terrible spiral.
The stories of these women will unlock a past filled with dark secrets and strange connections, all leading to an unforgettable, horrific climax.
Dark bleatings, my lovely tribe. This book is something else. I wasn’t sure how much I liked it when I finished it and put it down, but now that I’ve had a few days and let it set in, I think I might love it.
It’s written in alternating perspectives (I love that, as narrative structures go) of two main characters initially, and then in the back half of the book, we get a couple more. Myrrh is looking for her birth parents. She’s not the nicest to herself and refers to the nasty little voice that keeps insisting she’s not worthy of love as her goblin.
Cayenne is in what seems like a loveless marriage with a husband that forever sides with his daughter (Cayenne’s stepdaughter), and constantly dismisses how awful she is to his wife. Cayenne just wants him to mediate and stand up for her a bit, but in not doing so he has made it clear that he will never prioritise or even care about his wife’s pain. Cayenne is desperate to start her own family and dreams of being pregnant, but can’t get her husband to even look at her.
As I progressed through the lives of these women, I couldn’t stop wondering if or how they might intertwine at a later point. I was most interested in Cayenne’s story, I guess because I’ve been in loveless relationships in the past and could empathise with her frustration of feeling more like a nuisance than anything else. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for Myrrh on account of her constant self-hatred – it made me so sad to see her being so cruel to herself.
The climax was really interesting and unexpected because at no point did I accurately predict where any of this was going to go. Overall, I think this is a great psychological exploration of some subject matter that goes darker than I imagined it could, and an effective, character-driven horror story.
If you’d like to check out the book or the author, I’ve popped some links below for you:
Bleeeat!
Happy Goat Horror 
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